Crocus Establishes Prototyping Environment for Next Generation MRAM Technology

Crocus Technologies today announced that it has qualified its complete manufacturing environment for the development and rapid prototyping of MRAM. Building upon conventional 130nm CMOS sourced at a leading foundry, Crocus is leveraging Silicon Valley-based SVTC's capabilities to complete the integration of its second-generation MRAM technology. To complement these two facilities and achieve a complete MRAM manufacturing capability, Crocus has invested more than 5 million Euros to purchase and deploy a full suite of dedicated magnetic-technology wafer processing tools for the deposition, annealing, patterning, and metrology of MRAM memory chips. With this investment and these achievements, Crocus has positioned itself as one of the very few companies in the world capable of fully integrating advanced MRAM onto CMOS.

Crocus' proprietary MRAM technology solves all the well-known problems encountered in earlier MRAM developments. The company's technology has demonstrated its stability, reliability, data retention, endurance, and scalability, while exhibiting high speed, low power dissipation, and excellent resistance to external perturbation.

"We found at SVTC an ideal incubation and development environment," said Jean Pierre Braun, founder and CEO of Crocus Technologies. "SVTC is a modern foundry that provides a broad range of necessary equipment and processes. Furthermore, we have been able to install some of our own equipment in SVTC's clean room, and we have deployed a complete, full-time Crocus team there. This has allowed us to develop and integrate our proprietary MRAM manufacturing process with outstanding efficiency while maintaining full confidentiality of our IP and know-how."

"SVTC's independent development foundry model is a great fit for companies working to commercialize novel technologies as quickly as possible, while maintaining strong intellectual property positions," said Scott Marquardt, VP of Marketing at SVTC.